


Stable, with rising possibilities

by ninhursag



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alex Manes Deserves Nice Things, Alien handprints, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everyone deserves nice things, F/M, Idiots in Love, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Maria DeLuca Deserves Nice Things, Michael Guerin Deserves Nice Things, Multi, Power Play, Sex and talking, Talking, Under-negotiated Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-08-14 15:35:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20194603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninhursag/pseuds/ninhursag
Summary: In which Maria finds herself the bridge for two idiots she loves who can't figure their stuff out. But that doesn't mean she's not getting any."Take it from me, none of this shit is fair. You're gay, we can't even threesome this out."He looked befuddled. "Threesome this out? Is that a thing people do?"She made a sour face. "Only in particularly promising pornography, I think."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline, what timeline? 
> 
> Also Maria already knows Michael is an alien.

Maria watched Michael watch Alex and Alex pretend not to be watching him back. There was something weirdly soothing about it. Michael called it entropy.

"Entropy?" Maria asked, mouth quirked while she wiped down the bar. She wasn't the class genius like these idiots she surrounded herself with.

"Our orbit is decaying," Michael said, like that was an answer. He had his eyes half closed, lids bruised from exhaustion and too much drinking. "Entropy is the natural state of the universe-- decay, chaos, we all fall apart. It takes energy to keep order, but entropy happens by itself. Effortless."

And Michael drank more-- poured fucking nail polish remover into his beer and rolled his eyes and chugged. And wasn't that a fucking trip.

Her-- whatever Guerin was-- was an acetone chugging alien.

And Maria watched him, the rough, stubbled line of his throat while he swallowed. Pink curl of his tongue. He was so good with his mouth, honey slow, steady and warm. Like his mouth was made to lick a woman open and he'd honed his skills on a thousand willing bodies before he came to her.

He was probably an amazing cocksucker too. Alex could tell her. If Alex were talking to her, or up to comparing notes. 

Yeah that was mean.

Michael watched Alex and Alex watched the lights on the old school jukebox.

Alex watched Michael and Michael watched Maria, smiled at her and touched her wrist. Kissed her fingers, her hair, the shell of her ear.

"You're in love with him, though," she said, later that night, while he was still kneeling between her knees in her office, pressing a last kiss over her clit before he pulled her panties back up. That kiss that sent a spark and a shiver through her made her knees knock.

He rolled his eyes. "Sure," he said. "But love doesn't fix entropy. Not enough energy for that and I'm tired of trying and failing."

She laughed. More irritated than pained. It should hurt, but it didn't. There was no knife twist to knowing Michael loves Alex Manes. It was just a fact. Factored in. She said something anyway, "It sounds like what you're saying is if things didn't suck so hard right now, you'd try again with Alex. But since you don't have the energy for that, you want to date me?"

Michael shrugged again. She could see the lump of his hard cock in his jeans. He'd gotten her off, not vice versa. He still looked tired. He smiled a little. "Yeah. I guess. I mean, not... I like you. Actually a lot. I think I could love you."

"And you're too tired and mopey for epic love. It's too much work to fight entropy." She carded her fingers through his hair, pulling just a little, keeping him where he was.

He allowed it, he stayed. "You're making it sound like it's bad. I want to be happy, not dramatic. I want a home, not a love poem. Don't you?"

"Maybe I like drama? Maybe I love it?"

A snicker. But still he stayed, watching her. Kneeling where he was. "Nah. If you did, we'd have done the nasty a long time ago. Tell the truth, Maria, if everything were cool in you life-- Mama DeLuca was happy and healthy, the world was chill-- would you be with me?"

She should let it go. She should a lot of things. "Maybe. I don't know. What happens when we get to be work, Michael? Because eventually, we will."

He rolled his eyes. "I dunno. You gonna work with me? Or run for your life?"

"But you just said you love him." Another sigh as she stroked her fingers over his hair and he leaned into her touch. Her hands keeping him, no matter what her mouth was saying.

He closed his eyes for just a moment and then opened them. Looked at her. She ran her palm over his cheek. "Yeah. I love him. He probably loves me. And I probably love you too. And you?"

Well tell the truth, why don't you, Maria. She made herself.

"And I probably love him, fine. He doesn't love me. What would you do if he were right here wanting you? With those big brown eyes and that tight little--"

"I dunno, Maria, what would you want me to do? Kiss him. Kiss you? Both." He licked his lips and she couldn't help the smile.

"Maybe." With a sudden push she was on her feet, off the chair, light and easy. He looked at up her, eyebrows raised, still on his knees. 

"Then maybe I would. He kisses beautifully, you know. Make a grown man sing his hallelujahs."

She knelt down next to him, closer, put her hands on his body, on the buttons of his shirt. He made a noise and then she whispered in his ear, warm breath on his too warm skin. "But I thought he was too much damn work, Guerin."

There was a not quite laugh. Helpless. He leaned in like he thought she would be the one to kiss him after all her talk, lick the taste of her out of his mouth. 

He had a mouth well worth kissing even with the bullshit that came out of it sometimes. "Maybe, if I wasn't in it by myself, I could handle it."

"Is that what you want? To not be in this by yourself." She pressed her mouth closer, on his cheek, fingers still unbuttoning his shirt. Slow. Button by button.

He shivered under her hands like it hurt, his mouth a little open, tongue pink on his lips. He was still waiting on that kiss no one was giving him. Like it hurt. "DeLuca, man, I want everything. It's more what I can get that's the problem."

She kissed him, finally, but not on the mouth. On the warm skin over his sharp, sharp collar bone. She pulled open the last button so she could shove the shirt down. Trapping his hands for a moment in the tangles of it. His eyes widened. She pushed him down, down, down, flat on the hard wooden floor and he let her.

"Me," she said. She climbed on top of him, sighing a little as her bare thighs rubbed against the soft worn denim of his jeans. "Entropy. Those are things you think you can get. Him, chill, quiet, order, what you think you can't have."

He stared up at her. Letting her. He was going to let her. Jesus, no wonder half the town wanted to nail him. "You know it's not like that," he whispered. Painfully. "You help me be better. I hope I help you."

She laughed. Leaned over again like she was going to offer that kiss and then canted away. Teasing hands on the snap of his jeans. "Well. You make me come. That's helpful. Maybe. Should I let you go? Before our thing turns into work?"

He went still right then. Right under her hands. Suddenly and painfully, eyes wide like he thought she meant it. Like she might mean it right now with his shirt off and unzipping his fucking jeans. "I figured you would when you were done with me. That time now?"

What the hell had that idiot Manes done to him?

She shook her head and let go of his jeans. Grabbed him then, by his stupid, stubbled face and glared into hazel honey eyes. He flinched, but didn't break free. Finally, finally, finally she kissed him on the mouth, hard and warm and hungry. And he let her. Open and hungry and afraid.

"Michael Guerin, how are you a literal genius and yet you are a dumb fuck?"

And that made him stop flinching at least. Instead he laughed at her. "But tell me again that you love me, DeLuca," he said.

"I do. And hell if I don't regret it. Now let me get your fucking cock out."

He went with her to visit her mother. Her mother who kept forgetting who he was. Who kept asking to go home, please, sweetheart, I'm feeling better, now, please, where are we, whenever she remembered Maria was her daughter. Please.

"You're a handsome boy," she said and patted Michael's hand. The one that had once been mangled. "What's your name?"

He smiled politely and kindly and played along. "I'm Michael, Ma'am." Like he didn't know her.

"You should meet my daughter. Have you seen her anywhere?" Mimi said, smiling. "She likes you."

"That's great, because I like her too." Michael smiled and leaned in conspiratorially. "She's pretty amazing, but not quite as awesome as her mom."

Mimi laughed and patted his cheek again. "And go find Alex. That boy has had enough misery." Her gaze sharpened when Michael slipped back. She turned and looked at Maria who sighed.

"Ok," she said. "We will, mom."

"Oh, Maria, is that you sweetheart? Can you drive me home? Only… I think I'm lost."

Maria didn't cry. Michael held her hand, very gently.

Alex was the harder one, the one that was hard done by. And he was, she could see that on him. He had that irritated look that was faint cover for hurt when he looked at her. 

He looked at Michael like the world was in his belly and his heart and it was cutting him open from the inside out.

She sat down next to him at the Crashdown, like they were still seventeen and best friends and ten years of silence and lies didn't matter.

"Are we on speaking terms?" She asked, forthright. She didn't say, I picked up the man you fucked and left on the side of the road so many times he didn't know if he was coming or going, loved or discarded, and I ain't sorry.

She was sorry. A little. A lot. Not enough to stop doing it, so it didn't count. 

He glared at her, narrow eyed. "I dunno, Maria, I thought we were friends."

She shrugged. Her friend. Sure. They were. "Sure. We were in high school. Then you went off to travel the world, meet interesting people and kill them with the airforce and I barely heard five words from you in ten years."

"I love him. That's three words. And you knew that because I told you. That's not friends. More words." His glare, that angry, bitter, familiar one. 

She sighed. "So do I. I'm not his epic love, but I give a damn. I give a damn about you too, Manes."

His face was beautiful when he was pissed, sharp cheekbones, straight nose and dark hair like a messy reverse halo. Pissed and beautiful all the time. "You give a damn about his dick. Mine's no good to you."

"You want his dick? Come and take it. I cannot compete with you, Jolene."

Alex blinked. Sighed. Maybe smiled, just a little. "Don't make me laugh, that's not fair."

She smiled back. "Take it from me, none of this shit is fair. You're gay, we can't even threesome this out."

He looked befuddled. "Threesome this out? Is that a thing people do?"

She made a sour face. "Only in particularly promising pornography, I think."

Alex looked stricken then. Like he thought-- like he thought anyone actually expected that. Wide brown eyes, soft mouth, soft like the lonely boy he'd been. "I can't-- Maria-- I can't. I've tried believe me. With girls. Women."

"Oh, Jesus, that wasn't a serious-- I was kidding. You know that. Right? You know that."

He still had that face, those eyes, when he was afraid. Jesus, no wonder Guerin loved him hopelessly and helplessly, sight unseen for years. Hadn't she a little? Since they were kids. "No, but it kind of was. I wish I could. Do you think I don't know how much easier that would be?"

It hurt to be looked at the way Alex did when he was trying so hard to trust you. She trusted him. This wasn't fair. "What's easier about that, using me as a buffer for all of your epic feelings? You're not exactly in love with me, Alex Manes."

He laughed. "You might be the most emotionally aware one of the three of us, but that's only relatively speaking, Maria DeLuca."

Ok. Well then.

And then she had an idea. Inspiration from on high. It was brilliant, she was brilliant. "You are completely right. I'm being an idiot too. We need to get out of Roswell and everyone else's drama and sort our shit out."

"Love retreat for you and Michael?" Alex scoffed. Like he thought he could play take backsies with her now. "Who's we, kemosabe?"

"He's in love with you too, you dumbass. Look, we're not gonna hang around here, mooning like idiots in a soap opera. We need to talk with our mouths." She was mentally packing her bags while Alex stared at her like she'd turned into a crazy person right in front of him.

"I'm not going anywhere with you. I don't need to see your shit," he tried again.

"Yeah, whatever." She stood up, frowning. "Come on, let's tell asshole cowboy we're going."

"Maria, no!" But he let himself be pulled to his feet. Foot. Ouch. She'd need to get a place without stairs, right.

"You can't say what you just said and then back out, Alex. Sorry, you're in," she told him, firmly, steadily.

His mouth protested, but his body followed along.

Maria finagled them a week in a house in the mountains, in the cool dry air. It was mostly empty, belonged to a friend of Mimi DeLuca's who thought her daughter needed a break.

Alex tried to not come a few times before they got him in the car. Michael might have let him back out, but Maria didn't. She was the one who showed up at the Valenti cabin and packed his duffel bag for him.

"Otherwise you're wearing Guerin's clothes," she said. "Maybe you'd like that."

Michael laughed and then, then, only when he realized that Alex wasn't actually fighting this, carefully, gently, took him by the hand.

"Please, 'Lex, sweetheart."

Alex looked at him, warm, a hint of a smile. "I'm not your sweetheart," he said, but he didn't pull away, didn't so much as flinch. Maybe he melted a little, into Guerin's hands.

Alex and Michael didn't look at each other on the drive but they sat down in the back seat close, hip to hip. Maria watched them from the rearview mirror while she drove.

She was going to get screwed here, she could feel it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At the cabin, things rapidly intensify between the three of them. It's not easy.
> 
> Also there's strip poker and vulnerability.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Less fluffy than I intended. Hence there will be one more part so we can get to the handprint sex.

The house was more of a cabin, not really winterized, but it had a generator and well water. A bed and a couch and a pile of stupid party games.

She unloaded the supplies, mostly food and alcohol, with Michael as her loyal pack mule. Alex was on his crutch instead of the prosthetic, but he tried to help anyway, to the extent allowed.

They all ended up on the porch, settled on the steps with a sixer at the ready.

"I'm pretty over IPAs," Maria said. "But these aren't hops for the hell of it."

"They're beer," Michael said, with a shrug. "I like beer."

"Natty light, bro," Alex muttered. They bumped fists and grinned at each other. 

"Bah," Maria said, "Cowboy I get, but you, Alex?"

"Why, just because I liked eyeliner when I was a dumb teenager, I have to like snotty beer?" Alex snickered. "Stereotype me, DeLuca."

"I liked your eyeliner," Michael said sincerely. "And every beer. Even snotty beer."

"You drink nail polish remover, no one cares what you like," Maria sneered. Then she laughed out loud and they both did too.

Too bad it was the last really nice moment they had before she went inside to get the next round.

She didn't even know what caused the shift, from when she left to when she came back. Some whispered poison in Michael's ear that had him flinching blindly. Some trigger for Alex that made every word out of his mouth bitter and scared. They were like that when she got there.

Snapping, not bantering. Arms crossed, tense hands.

"Maria, man, this isn't gonna work," Michael whispered to her in the tiny kitchen he followed her into. "He might love me, but I fucking repel him. He Superman, me fucking kryptonite."

"Hush," she told him, hand on his arm, a little louder, loud enough to be heard in the tiny space. "You're the alien, that makes you Superman. He's Lois Lane."

"Meh," Alex said, his crutch clacking on the floorboards as he came in. "I think I'm Lana Lang. You be Lois, Maria."

Michael spun around. "Can't wait for me to move on so you can get rid of me, huh?"

"You're the one who can't wait to leave," Alex said, eyes narrow incredulous.

Maria rubbed her hand against her forehead. "Can we stop here and consider that neither of you are leaving? Where are you even going to go?"

"Nowhere," Michael said. He glared at Alex. "I've never left. I crashed down here in a fucking spaceship full of refugees or… whatever they were… and I've been here and I have never left. I've been right here. What about you, Alex? Can you say that?"

And Alex's eyes were wide and dark and terrible. "Do you know," he started. Stopped. Swallowed. "The thing is that."

Michael sucked in an audible breath. "What, Alex? Just spit it out. What's so goddamned terrible about me this time?"

Alex's head shook, like the motion was involuntary. He took his own breath. In and out. In and out. "Nothing, not you. Not about you. Just. Bodies disappear in the desert, you know that right? Drug dealers. Lot lizards. Foster kids. They disappear all the time and if no one finds them, the cops just assume they moved on and drifted off. No one looks for them."

Maria blinked, mystified and took another look at Michael. The look on his face had shifted, anger faded into something else, a blink of confusion. Then something else. Something empty and tired. "Yeah, I know that. Happened to kids at the group home."

"He knew. That you were sleeping rough in your truck. That you were basically a runaway. That no one was looking for you, looking out for you. He knew that."

"Right. So you left? You let him win?" He looked exhausted, like he hadn't slept in days. She didn't even know which he.

"I had to. I didn't even know the half of how dangerous he was to you but it was bad enough. You think I want to be your Lana Lang? I fucking don't. But I had never beat him before."

"You have now." Michael looked at his hands. His hand.

"Yeah, because I left to learn how to. And I'm here now."

"Ok. So just stop. Just be here. Could you just… could we just be here, if this is where we are. Please, Alex?"

"I'm… yeah. I'm here."

So that was it. They drank and played go fish like kids. Sitting at a bare table in the mountains were people got lost and bodies got found.

Kids like Michael was, foster kids in group homes with bad reputations.

Unspoken. 

Kids like Alex was, abused, tormented, rebellious, constantly talking about running away. If he'd just disappeared one day, wouldn't everyone have thought so?

Maria asked him later, while Alex was in the bathroom. "It was his dad, wasn't it?"

"Yeah," Michael said shortly. He didn't look at her, he looked at his hand. The left one, the one that had been mangled for years until it suddenly wasn't. "It was his dad. A lot of things were."

"I would have looked for you," she said, suddenly. "I know Max and Isobel would have. But I would have too."

He gave a little half shrug and a near smile. "I know. You found me already, haven't you?"

She smiled back. "I'm good at finding people. Got the sight, you know."

Neither of them said the obvious. Everyone had known what Jesse Manes was, what he did to his son, what he did. Everyone in town knew. They could have found Michael or what was left of him and it wouldn't necessarily have mattered. Not then.

"Let's play strip poker," Michael said when Alex wandered back in.

"Bah," Maria muttered but there was a gleam in Alex's dark eyes.

"Sure, deal me in," he said, shark vicious and Michael grinned at him.

"I'm just gonna watch," Maria said.

"Nope," Michael's expression was set. Something fierce and painful. "You're in or you're out, no sidelines in this house."

"Does Alex want me in?" Maria asked, with a blink. That vicious, steady dark stare of his turned on her.

A reminder, this sweet boy with all his love talk and deep grief was a killer. Their nation issued him a gun and he cradled it and he used it.

And Alex smiled at her with his gleaming white teeth. "Yeah. I'll deal you in. First person naked gets fucked."

Maria swallowed and fisted her hands at her sides. He was gut punchingly beautiful and looking at her like-- not like she was Guerin but like-- that wasn't how he looked at her. Not how he was supposed to. She didn't understand it.

"I thought you didn't," she began. But she couldn't find the words.

He laughed, but it wasn't-- there was something there. Not pain. Something else. "Isn't that why we're here? Besides, who says you're gonna lose?"

Michael got them another round and Alex dealt. Round one, Guerin lost his boot, then Maria's scarf.

Alex's shoe and sock.

By the end she was in bra and panties. Michael had his cowboy hat on.

Alex had on his boxers, no prosthetic, crutches leaned against the wall. It was the first time Maria had seen it, the injury, not just the results of it. The aching vulnerability of his body, the way his leg just stopped, the scars. The way he let them-- let her-- because Michael had seen, he must have.

She didn't stare, no more, a lot less, than at Michael's casual nudity and his stupid hat, but it rocked her.

Alex smiled down at his cards like it wasn't anything. And raised.

Michael called. Tawny eyebrows went up when Alex casually dropped his losing hand, 7-2. 

"You could just have asked, we'd have said yes," Michael said.

Alex shrugged unevenly and propped himself off to strip off his damned boxers. "Yeah, but this way I get to hang out with you and your goddamn hat for a while."

And Michael stood up and offered an arm and Maria was on her feet offering the other one, like a human support. Like it was normal for Alex to do this shit, be like this, vulnerable, and completely bare and letting some other human being just…

Take him.

He wanted this, allowed this, casually planned for this.

She didn't know, with all their showy antagonism. She hadn't understood, thought there'd be a roughness here too, in bed. Maybe playfully, like she could come together with Michael, maybe even on the edge of violence, the way she'd seen Michael with strangers.

It wasn't-- it wasn't anything close-- it was--

"Sweetheart, sweetheart, my own, my love, anything, your eyes slay me, look at me, look at me, please, please, please, Alex, Alex, sweetheart."

No one was more gentle than Michael on his knees, on a bed in the sunlight. Murmuring, kissing, touching with hands that shook.

And Alex took it, wide eyed, his own body shaking, parted lips and grasping hands. "Guerin, Guerin, Guerin."

And she didn't have words, but Alex grabbed one of her hands and he let her, he let her touch and she wanted to weep, to shake, she was afraid.

She wanted. It didn't make sense like this, she hadn't ever known.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And done! In which there's sex, resolution and things are actually talked about, only partially due to alien hand print magic.
> 
> "Um. Yes. Yeah. Whatever you want, Alex." Michael swallowed, the motion obvious in the long line of his throat. "Yeah. Can we just say we played and you won?"
> 
> Yeah, that was evil in Alex's dark eyes. "Nah. What would be the fun in that?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note that there's some mild but under negotiated power play going on in the section. It ends up effecting one of the characters more than expected. 
> 
> Everything is consensual, no hardcore stuff, but some discussions that should have happened in an ideal world didn't.

If watching Michael touch Alex was like staring into the wrong bedroom, staring into the face of the wrong star-- touching him herself was like jumping into the her familiar bath but it was-- it should have been prosaic, platonic-- but it was-- she'd jumped into a fire instead.

His hand on hers was strong and steady when he pressed her palm against his skin.

He was warm, but cooler than Michael, scarred, marked, skin a lighter shade than hers, only something about the sharpness of his features and the warmth of the color of his skin saying he wasn't entirely Anglo. A little flush from drinking and light enough to show it easily.

Smooth, wiry muscle, when he'd been a skinny boy, once. His hips canted up, as much as he could, balance impeccable despite what was missing.

He smiled, warm there too. Soft dark eyes, soft, mussed dark hair. 

Why am I here? She wanted to yell. Michael turned and looked at her, wide eyed, like she had yelled something out loud after all. Like he was listening.

He shook his head, and his eyes were golden and soft, lashes wet, and he whispered, "it's ok, DeLuca, I know, but this is where you're supposed to be."

And he kissed her and his mouth tasted like beer, hoppy and warm. And he kissed her and his mouth tasted wet and open and new.

And he kissed her.

And he pushed her down and Alex fucking Manes wrapped his arms around her and he kissed her and he tasted like fire. 

And she watched him wrap himself around Michael, whole leg and lost leg, and pull him in close and close.

"Stay," he hissed. "Guerin, right there, like that, stay like that."

After, Michael yawned hugely and stretched out on his stomach, long rangy limbs and smooth muscle, bare skin marred with occasional scars. 

"You're here," he said, into the pillow, but everyone knew what he meant. "You're here, you're here."

"I've been kidnapped," Alex said. "Under duress." And then he pressed a kiss against Michael's bare, muscled shoulder, with a gentleness Maria had never seen, even when he was a boy. Not before today. 

"You're here," Michael said. She could hear the grin, she didn't need to see it. Sunny, triumphant. 

Alex grinned too, wide, soft. "Yeah, well, I can't argue facts." And then, even softer. "I'm trying."

"Oh, sunshine, you are succeeding," Michael murmured. "You always do when you put your mind to it."

When it started to get dark, Maria slipped out of the bed. Alex, who she'd thought was asleep, blinked up at her, luminous eyes in the fading light. 

"Hey, where you going?" he mumbled.

She shrugged. "Never was a sleep cuddler," she whispered, not to wake Guerin, whose face was smooth now, breathing even. "Gives me muscle cramps."

"Really?" he asked, brows shifted into something skeptical.

Maria's mouth curled in amusement. "You put it all on the line like you did today and you think now I'm this bitch that's gonna blow smoke at you about sleeping arrangements?"

He sighed and shook his head. "White lies? That wouldn't make you a bitch, come on, Maria."

"Well, it's legit, no color of lie. Go to sleep, Alex. You look like you need it." 

He smiled a little and gave a small shrug that had no right to be adorable. "I don't really sleep much," he said, but then, as if to prove himself wrong, yawned right there. Heavily and uncontrollably. "Might give it a try anyway," he added, with a flush, covering his mouth.

She kissed him then, on the forehead. Delicate. He smiled a little wider. 

She went to sit on the porch in the dark with a candle, drink more and think about her life choices for a while. Then she fell asleep on the couch.

Michael woke up first and made pancakes-- which ended up crispy but mostly unburned-- from a box someone had left behind the last time this cabin was occupied.

"These mix things can survive a nuclear winter," he told Maria cheerfully, way too cheerfully, when she stumbled in, yawning and trying to remember where she'd stashed the coffee grinder and the beans.

"Fancy," Michael said.

She gave him the finger and tried to remember how to make coffee on the stove.

The smell of that was what drew out Alex, yawning, in boxers and on his crutches. He grinned at them, something shy and hopeful. This was what Michael gave him. She warmed to it.

They spent the morning not talking about anything important. Michael read a book that was about something ridiculous, like physics. Alex did fancy ass crossword puzzles, whole leg stretched out firmly in front of him. They talked occasional shit at each other, old high school memories. Remember the time we hitched to Austin for that concert.

Remember that swimming hole you tied the rope to. Remember when Liz said. But remember when Rosa-- they looked at each other and at Michael. And stopped. 

Maria read a magazine for a while, then got bored and made lunch.

She found a battered old game of Risk under the kitchen sink which looked like more fun. It smelled faintly of mildew and cleaning products but it made Alex smile.

"I used to love that game." 

Michael grinned back at him. "So, what, strip risk?"

Alex gave a long, slow shake of his head. "Sorry, nope. I play this game to win."

"I'm good with losing to you, sweetheart." Michael's lashes shielded his eyes, low and fluttery. Smile steady on his mouth, maybe a little too steady.

Two eyebrows went up and Alex nodded. "You'd better be good with it. Because you will."

"What if I won?" Maria asked, on some impulse. "Or... lost?"

Alex turned around and she half expected there to be surprise in his expression, that they'd forgotten she was there, but that wasn't what his face said. He rubbed his palms together, something like mischief. Calculation. No, he hadn't forgotten about her for a second. "There are more ways to fuck someone than with a dick, which I know you know."

"And if I lost?" she repeated, carefully. 

"Well, I just said-- anyway-- I can use his, right?" He turned and looked at Michael with absolute, evil certainty in his expression. "Sweetheart?" 

"Um. Yes. Yeah. Whatever you want, Alex." Michael swallowed, the motion obvious in the long line of his throat. "Yeah. Can we just say we played and you won?"

Yeah, that was evil in Alex's dark eyes. "Nah. What would be the fun in that?"

Michael nodded shortly. His hands were fisted at his sides and his eyes looked dark, all pupil with a thin ring of golden brown around them. "Yeah. Um. Ok. Your game, 'Lex." 

He played halfheartedly even though she suspected he'd have been able to put up a fight if he wanted to. Drank his way, through a bottle of quality lager and looked at Alex from under his lashes like he was offering something up.

Maria, on the other hand, was totally outmatched. She had that vague thought again that if Liz were here... 

Then again, there was a terrifying thought.

"What's so funny, Maria?" Alex asked, with that same half amused, half cruel smile as his pushed his armies into the next country. 

"You don't even want to know," she said, with a little head shake. 

They ended up on the bed, Maria sprawled out and naked in more ways than one, legs spread too wide for comfort. And Alex's hands on Michael's body, on his hip and on his dick, pulling the damn condom on him. Then moving him like a puppet, slow and tight and strong, sliding him in. Setting the damn pace like this was his show.

"You are so hard," Alex whispered in his ear, pitched for both to hear. "You just love this part."

Michael didn't say a word, he just shook like it was out of his control, everything was, and Maria heard a sound that didn't feel like it came from her. Alex's hand brushed against her when Michael thrust.

"Oh fuck," she hissed. And stared into Alex's eyes. "Are you…"

"I do know how it's done, DeLuca," he said, easy, like he didn't have his thumb over her clit. Licked his lips. Warm and pink and his mouth was...

Michael made a whining noise, throaty and deep and those damn lashes of his fluttered so pretty. Alex just smiled.

"Don't worry, Guerin, she might get your dick, but if you can keep it together for me, you're getting mine." He whispered and there it was, right there, and her hips couldn't still and everything felt electric.

She lay there, still spread out on her back, eyes half closed, watching Michael get fucked on his hands and knees. Like she'd seen one or two fleeting times before, when she kicked him and some asshole out of the bathroom, or once in his truck out in the parking lot.

Except it wasn't that, it wasn't. The careful way Alex touched him, slow, almost coaxing, ran his hands over that arched line of spine. All the vicious calculation he had with Maria melted away and it was, "hey, hey, you're ok, come on, you're doing amazing. Everything. You are. Shhh. You are the best thing. I'm here I'm here I promise."

And Michael had his eyes squeezed shut, teeth sunk into his lower lip, like he was holding onto everything so tightly, like it could never get away. Like he was terrified he was accidently squeezing it out of his grasp.

After, he curled up on his side, wordlessly, and shook like he could shake apart. It took Maria too long to realize that he was crying, soundlessly. But there was a rattling sound.

And he wasn't shaking anymore because the knickknacks on the wall were doing it for him. His power made the windows rattle.

She took a deep breath and on pure instinct she hugged him, slow and carefully, but hard.

Michael wouldn't meet anyone's eyes for a long time after, but he ate what was put in front of him and stayed on the couch, huddled between them, and still not quite shaking anymore under their arms. Things stopped moving randomly, at least, as he calmed and settled.

"You're safe," Maria told him softly, brushing a kiss over a stray curl. "You get to have this. We're here and you're here and it's going to be ok."

He sighed and lay his head down on her shoulder so she could pet his hair.

And Alex looked at her, wide eyed, frowning a little, like she'd just given him the missing puzzle piece.

"I'm sorry," Michael said, maybe an hour later. "I just kind of-- that was a lot. The shift in entropy. Like all of my models, my expectations, keep changing."

"Too much?" Alex asked. Gentle, a little hoarse, as if he'd been the one not quite crying.

"Was it too much for you, Alex?" He says instead of answering. Swallowed like he expected Alex to say that it was. Like he was half daring him to.

"I don't look away, Guerin. I don't ever want to again," he muttered and then leaned in and hugged him, hard.

They didn't have sex again that day. Michael played her old guitar, the one she'd dragged out just for him and she sang the words. A sweet old country ballad about a lost love.

Alex sat, settled in by Michael, knee to knee, watching, listening, eyes heavy lidded, half closed.

Michael frowned at him once, after he's put the guitar down, and said, "what happens when we go home?"

Alex sighed and squeezed his eyes shut. "We'll figure something out." Then he opened them and looked at Maria, those dark hopeful eyes gone warm. "Maria won't let us fuck up."

Alex looked at Maria as if she had all the answers which made her want to laugh.

She set up her phone to play music for when Michael's hands got tired. Some jaunty 90's tune. One she must have danced to with her mom when she was small and the world was safe.

She felt stupid, small and petty for wanting back what the men in the room with her had never had.

After dinner they talked about nothing. An old movie. Alex told a story about a patrol in Iraq that she thought he meant to be funny, but was actually terrifying.

Michael talked about stupid things he'd found in the glove compartments of people's cars when he was working on them. Maria gave a run down of the pony's biggest idiots.

Nothing. Just things they liked, books they'd read, ideas they'd had. 

"I missed you while you were gone," she told Alex. "You could have sent a postcard."

He shrugged. "I think I did? Once? It had a mountain on it."

"Oh yeah, once," she scoffed.

Michael stirred from the couch, where he was sprawled out with Alex's legs on top of him. "I got postcards. They had song lyrics on them and didn't have a return address." He smiled faintly.

Alex flushed. "I was eighteen. I think I thought that was romantic."

Michael nodded. "I was eighteen too, it kinda was. I missed them when they stopped coming. Figured… you must have moved on?" There was the careful expression on his face, like he was trying not to let everything show. Failing. But trying.

"I'm sorry," Alex whispered. "It was a shitty time right then. I didn't know how to… I wish I'd done it different."

Michael just shook his head. "You came back. You're here now."

"You shouldn't have waited ten years in this dump."

"If I'd known going in you would come back, it would have been easy, Alex. Anyway, it wasn't because of you, don't flatter your-- don't take that on."

And Maria flinched and looked away. Because Michael looked at her then and she knew, she knew, she knew. 

"You didn't kill Rosa, Michael," she said, certain of this as she would have been even if she hadn't heard the truth from her dearest friend's own mouth. "That wasn't you."

He breathed in hard. "Right but I made it worse. And if someone suspected-- I had to be here. What if someone thought it was Isobel? We thought it was Isobel."

Maria's head jerked back up and she stared at him. He was looking away, but Alex's confused eyes met hers. "You stayed so you could take the fall for her?" she said, forcing the words out.

Michael shrugged. "I mean, that wasn't plan A or anything. I just wanted everyone to be safe. But it wouldn't have been-- no one would have been surprised if it turned out to be me and I didn't have anything so... back up plan."

"No," Alex hissed. And he shifted up so he could wrap his arms around Michael's body. "No. You don't. No. You're not a back up plan."

"It's ok," Michael told him, so gently, stroking the rigid lines of his back. "It didn't happen. You don't have to worry. It would have been ok, but it didn't happen."

"None of it should have happened," Maria said, softly, to herself. And Rosa. Oh Rosa. Ten lost, awful years.

She should go home. She should do something. She should.

She stayed just where she was, while Michael held onto Alex hard and whispered things he clearly meant as reassurances. They made her want to cry instead.

She slept on the couch.

On the fourth day, Alex caught her watching him while he was chopping vegetables. And it was like he saw, the way her eyes lingered on the broad lines of his shoulders, the muscle in his arms. High, tight ass. The way she'd seen him fuck and get fucked.

Like it just connected with him that she was looking now. The way he smiled then was frightening.

"So, do I turn you on like a real boy now, Maria? Have you taken me out of your little gay best friend box?" Alex said, with that viciousness she was starting to recognize. She knew it was at least 95% defensive. The problem was she didn't quite get where the other 5% was coming from and she wasn't sure he did either.

She sighed. Trying to tread carefully, but Jesus she was tired. In so many ways. "You know you do and you know it wasn't like that. I very much like guys, Alex Manes. So what? That doesn't mean I don't know you're gay."

He sighed too, some of the meanness fading, to her relief. "Yeah. So, maybe that's the part that gets me off-- knowing, you know."

She felt her eyebrows go up. "What, that I'm hot for you? Even though I know you can't feel like that back?"

"It's a head rush. Powerful. Knowing I have something you want and you can't get it unless I say so." He laughed but it sounded almost uncomfortable under the remains of viciousness. "Probably doesn't say anything good about me."

"You want to play power games with me, Alex, then we will." She sighed and looked down at the worn floorboards. The faded old throw rug. 

And then he-- his voice cracked, like a boy, like her old Alex, young and hopeful. "I don't want to fuck it up," he said. "You won't let me fuck it up, will you?"

It was painful and irresistible, the pull of him. So she closed the distance between them and reached out, slowly, so he'd have time to escape. When he didn't, she held him, very gently, the way she knew now that Michael did.

After lunch, she caught him by the hair, silky and soft, her fingers tangled in it. He stared at her, wide eyed, pink mouthed, and then nodded his consent.

He let her push him down on his knees, right there, right in front of Michael, who just gasped and went so still when Maria undid his jeans with her free hand, pulled out his already interested cock.

Made the best sound when she pushed Alex toward it, on him, to him, still gripping him by the hair and stage directed the way he took that cock into his too pretty mouth.

She still slept on the couch, but she slept damn well.

"I'm tired," she said, on the last night. "I don't want to turn into a pumpkin when we go home. But I don't know if I can keep doing this." 

"You're stupid," Michael said. "I love you, don't leave."

She smiled, fondly. "You love Alex."

Alex sighed noisily. "Yeah, and? We were killing each other. It was horrible. Don't leave, Maria."

She shook her head. "I don't understand what you feel for me. Either of you. Just. I'm not a fucking conduit to smooth out your rough edges."

"I could make you understand," Michael said and he raised his hand up, gently. "I mean, I could show you. You'll feel what I feel."

She frowned. "Like-- how?"

"Alien psychic shit."

"I should have known you were psychic."

"Not very, that's Isobel. Or you. I just can-- I can connect us. But only if you want. Both of you."

Alex frowned, speculatively. "You can do that? Not just connect us to you?"

"I think so," Michael shrugged. "I haven't tried on this level. Let's find out?"

"Yeah, ok, I'm in," Maria conceded. Like it was even a choice at this point.

The connection was warm and immediate. You'll feel what I feel, Michael had said, and she hadn't known what that would be like.  
The way that Michael's warm, glowing hand rested on her belly, on Alex's hip, steady, holding, keeping them where they were.

The warmth of his love, his hope, his helpless desperation. 

Hardass Michael Guerin had the gentlest hands. But he thought-- he thought it was her of all people-- that was all things gentle and beautiful. Wholeheartedly.

He thought it was her who the safest arms to rest in, steady and warm.

And deep down, he knew all this was temporary, with a deep aching disaster of knowledge and experience. No one was going to keep him, because no one had. But as long as this was allowed, he'd take it, whatever was on offer---

"No," she said. "No. I will, I swear I will. As long as you want."

Or maybe it was Alex, who was so full of that desperate guilt and fear. Alex who was this rushing wall of water and will to Michael's quick burning fire, fierce and inexorable. Alex who was kiln hardened by torture and war, a perversion of the gentleness that should have been. 

"He always called me a perversion," Alex said, and laughed, painfully. And she had a flash of what it had meant to be alone and small, in Jesse Mane's house. The way it had felt.

Alex, who was afraid that if he loved her, he'd be giving in somehow, to the things his father would have wanted. A girl, a woman, beautiful and soft, even if it wasn't entirely like that. And there was that irritation, annoyance because how could he not give in, when she calmed down Michael with her hands and picked up what he couldn't? 

When she was so careful and easy, and touched him like there was nothing wrong with him, remembered the boy that he used to be so clearly. Didn't just see three-quarters of a Manes man, ruined and scarred.

"Do you understand? Why we need you?"

And she did. 

She felt it like a slow motion crash, the way they edged around each other, clinging together, shoving apart. Two kids with only the barest idea of how to love and be loved. But there it was.

Like a spaceship crash. Michael's image. Or a fall off a cliff in the dark, no chute. In Alex's mind.

No wonder. Shit.

There was an urgency to the way they came together. Michael's desperation. "The pieces want to be together," he said and smiled, like he was maybe making fun of himself.

Alex's mental image smiled too. "They want to be, but we can't-- the edges are broken, they don't fit like they should." 

And Maria, she understood. She did. The weave and the weft, and the way that they kissed. 

On the last morning, she painted Alex's nails for him, an electric shade of blue, that made him laugh. It was exactly like being a teenager. Other than his missing leg, hard body and the way he didn't have that automatic flinch when she touched him anymore.

Michael watched, perched on the couch next to them, like it was deeply fascinating, bottom coat and topcoat and all.

"I can do you next," she offered easily. 

That made him grin. "Do me, baby," he said agreeably. He ducked the cloth that Alex threw at him, but not the kiss that came afterward.

**Author's Note:**

> I appreciate and adore feedback of all kinds!
> 
> Please come and talk about feelings with me haha.
> 
> You can also find me as ninhursag at dreamwidth https://ninhursag.dreamwidth.org/ or ninswhimsy on Tumblr


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